The Only Vikas That Happened In India In Last 9 Years Is That Women Were Earlier Raped In India, Now They Are Also Openly Paraded Naked Without Any Fear of Law and Order
The Only Vikas That Happened In India In Last 9 Years Is That Women Were Earlier Raped In India, Now They Are Also Openly Paraded Naked Without Any Fear of Law and Order
More than 150 deaths, 310 injuries, and several displacements, but it took the brutalization of two young women for PM Modi to finally respond. It took 77 days of absolute anarchy for PM Modi to talk about the repercussions of a civil war-like situation in Manipur. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence has been one of the most upsetting things India has ever seen, despite widespread outrage and persistent demand. On July 20, Prime Minister Modi denounced the heinous crime against two young Kuki Zo women who had been paraded naked in public. The viral video is claimed to be 76 days old and displays sickening visuals of two women being stripped naked and forced to parade through the streets. Notably, PM Modi’s cryptic speech seeks to comfort no one but his party with his inadequate but strategic acknowledgement, hand-picking one event and failing to address what caused it. Moreover, his attempt to generalise an event as such by taking the names of Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan when Manipur is witnessing the biggest terrors of conflict This abstraction is a conscious act of deviation from addressing any form of culpability because Manipur is a BJP-led state with an unfit Chief Minister who seemed unaware of the horrors faced by women in the state until a video surfaced. Apart from the speech being reprehensibly insufficient, it caused further outrage and anger in people, which makes the fissures of bad administration more visible today.
Opposition parties have strongly expressed their discontent with the incredibly late yet ineffectual speech. It forces citizens to perceive PM Modi’s silence and inaction as hostility, which has immensely shaken the ethos of democracy, changing the landscape of justice and order for those in need. Historically and over generations, women have been used as contest sites by men during times of conflict as an organised mechanism that perceives women as tools of weaponization against each other. The appalling video that surfaced recently is a blatant demonstration of gender-based violence that resulted from incessant impunity and anarchy in the state. The link between militarization and violence has a profound impact on women, who become passive victims of a hypermasculine milieu that remains unchallenged by the political administration and police force. The mob allegedly kidnapped the women from the police station without any intervention from the police, according to the victim’s relative’s written complaint. The Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud, issued a notice expressing distress and warning the Government to take action. What does Biren Singh’s failure as Chief Minister tell us about PM Modi’s manifesto promising women’s safety and justice? Does the BJP’s women’s empowerment scheme prove futile since his party-led government failed to ensure the safety of women?
The BJP’s manifesto stands in contrast to the data on the exploitation of women. The propagation of Hindutva Politics by the BJP, which is significantly rooted in a deeply patriarchal edifice, has begun to reflect its true consequences. Apart from failing to ensure safety, the cultivation of such a mindset has produced a sense of impunity among the elite caste men. The presence of such a mentality is bound to engender violence that is caste-based. As discussed, women have been at the receiving end of hypermasculinity and conflict in India. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there was a 45 per cent increase in rapes of Dalit women between 2015 and 2020. Caste-based violence against women is an indication of the dual discrimination women from minority sections experience. In the abuse concerning women from the minority section, caste closely intersects gender. Notwithstanding that India Law has formulated special provisions to ensure the protection of minority communities and tribes under the Prevention of Atrocities (PoA) Act, the weak judicial system has alarmingly failed to protect minorities, especially Dalits, from upper caste men. Similarly, the severe exploitation of women belonging to Kuki Zo at the hands of Meitei people with heightened impunity is due to a majoritarian mindset.
A 19-year-old Dalit woman was allegedly gang-raped on September 14, 2020, in the Hathras district of Uttar Pradesh, India, by four upper-caste men. She died two weeks later. A Dalit woman, age 21, was visiting a farm to gather cattle feed when the incident happened. She was allegedly dragged away by four men who were from the Thakur caste with a dupatta wrapped around her neck, injuring her spinal cord. The perpetrators had tried to strangle the girl as she resisted their rape attempt. She ended up biting her tongue as she was being choked. Her mother arrived at the scene after hearing her cries and discovering her lying down on the farm. Her condition had worsened by September 29, and she had died. The victim’s family claimed that the police were attempting to dispose of the victim’s body covertly. People all over the country were outraged when the victim was forcibly cremated on September 30 by the police without the permission of her family. Are these the plans the country has for minorities? In addition to being deprived of necessities, respect, and social standing, Dalits are also denied the right to even cremate their loved ones. The sickening dehumanisation is an intangible reality of a government that tries to feed false, cryptic narratives of valour and might into the people. The segregation based on communities and religions is creating an intensely volatile state.
The BJP has its methods for covering up the criminal behaviour of its members and its inability to solve problems. On July 20, MP Brij Bhushan was granted bail following his accusations of harassing female wrestlers. The Unnao Rape is a strong representation of the shaken and corrupt system that has been formed to protect its convicts. The accused Bharatiya Janata Party legislator, Kuldeep Sengar, was charged with the rape of a 17-year-old girl. After being put in judicial custody, Sengar was found guilty of the girl’s father’s death. The judiciary is so immensely corrupt that although both sides lodge complaints against each other, the police have blatantly chosen to arrest the victim’s father. Following this, the survivor tried to self-immolate near Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s residence in Lucknow. The victim’s father died in police custody. Sengar was also charged with conspiring murder in a car-truck collision that left the rape victim and her lawyer critically injured and two of her aunts dead. As usual, the centre was unable to respond to or acknowledge any protests. The landscape of women’s safety has completely changed with the presence of such atrocious men in power who ceaselessly reinforce and misuse their power against citizens. It represents a complete upheaval of the legal system and procedures.
Not only have Hindutva politics failed to bring peace back to the country, but they have also failed an 8-year-old rape victim. The victim was abducted, raped, and ultimately killed, according to the chargesheet provided by the Jammu and Kashmir Police, all as part of a deliberate plot to expel the area’s minority population. After she passed away, the body of the young Muslim Gujjar Bakarwal was found in the forest of Rasanna village in Kathua, Jammu. A Hindu right-wing protest, in which BJP leaders were also at the forefront, emerged, demanding the release of the accused. The Hindu Ekta Manch is forecasting our dystopian future. The rape of minors has been on the rise under the BJP government, but the PM manages to evade addressing any claims.
In the heartbreaking Bilkis Bano case of gang rape during the 2002 Gujarat riots, a pregnant woman who was 21 years old was raped, and her family members were killed as a result of the Godhra Train burning incident. A Mumbai court convicted 11 accused in 2017, including one main suspect who was a police officer, following a persistent legal battle. Bilkis Bano’s case surpassed all confines of violence. To emphasise, it remains a significant consequence of the persistent communal tension propagated by the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is truly lamentable how shrewd the justice system has become. Every single instance of rape and violence reveals the alarming lack of responsibility of the party. India as a nation suffers from Modi’s branding of the nation on the international stage, which is based on an unjustified sense of pride and accomplishments. In all of the cases discussed, PM Modi’s deafening silence remains unparalleled. Despite so many failures to provide justice to rape survivors and their families, why is it so hard for the government to reform rape laws and uplift minority communities?
The system has evidently and remarkably failed to ensure the safety of the people. No fraternal approach has been taken to resolve the conflict so far, and political action has been initiated to end the disputes. Deploying paramilitary forces to curb the issues of an already militarised state cannot be marked as an attempt to restore peace. A ban on the internet was mandated, according to CM Biren Singh’s justification, to stop the spread of such gruesome videos. It is shocking beyond belief that a Chief Minister would defend his ineffective rule, prohibiting the civil rights of people with half-baked reasoning.
